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Archive - April, 2007
timber!!!!!
This weekend was very productive and labor intensive at the new house. As my previous post mentioned, the house is being bricked and insulated, and that is moving along quite nicely. Since it is being bricked there is a ton of trash laying around the house, so it is a perfect time for me to do some “cleaning out” of our lot. As you can see from earlier posts, our lot backs up to trees and a very wooded area.
So, I borrowed a chain saw, bought some huge hedge clippers and went to town!
A buddy of mine helped me out on Saturday morning and we cleared out a ton of dead trees and big items. The chain saw was humming and we made great progress. Knowing that my time for FREE debris removal is limited I headed out to the lot again today…and that is where the story gets interesting. 
Here are some pictures of the “debris”.
Today, Sunday was a very productive day. Robin and the girls showed up later in the afternoon. The girls helped out, played and Robin was a champ. The day was coming to a close and the girls headed out. As I was wrapping things up, I looked off into the woods and saw a huge, dead tree. The tree was a towering 30-40 foot tall dead tree…it looked awful. I thought, how on earth am I going to be able to look at that out my window..it must go. Now please keep in mind, I am no John Deer, or professional chain saw guy! For those of you who really know me you are trying to wrap your mind around the fact that I am clearing out debris on a wooded lot!
Anyway, the huge old gray dead tree towering in the woods is begging for me to chain saw it down. So I went it for a closer look. Climbing through heavy brush, and navigating through a complete mess I could sense the Holy Spirit saying “What in the heck are you doing?”. But I kept on going. Coming to the base of this towering tree the adrenaline started flowing and the inner man said NO PROBLEM! So I went back to get the chain saw. On my way back I got hung up in barb wire. Yea, no doubt this was the Holy Spirit again saying..”Dude, your a digerati, not a chain sawarati!” Here is a picture of the barb wire damage…yes, there was blood.
So now, chain saw in hand, adrenaline flowing, Holy Spirit screaming you’re an IDIOT… and I’m “all in”. There is no way that towering gray dead tree is going to stand one more day. Here we go… About 20 min later, cutting on all 4 sides of the tree it finally falls to the ground. Well kinda. It fell on top of another big tree, broke in half and now looks worse than before. CRAP!
After another 20 or so min of pushing, pulling, praying, mentally cussing and sawing it came to the forest floor for good. Here is a picture of the bottom half!
Wow, what a blast! I am already looking forward to next weekend…volunteers welcome.
torched!
The Mavs were torched last night. Totally out played, out hustled, out everything…
I was wrong. I thought they pulled it together and would take this series because they are the better team. Now I am just hoping that can come together enough to beat them in 7.
Tomorrow night, 9pm and we will try it again.
God help me before I….
Tonight was a interesting / strange / confirming evening all wrapped up into one. I will try and make this short and to the point…thats just how I am as an ENTJ.
Right now I am in the middle of a book study at LifeChurch.tv. The book is Type Talk At Work. It is a book that focuses on the Myers & Briggs types and helps you focus them in your job… Anyway, my type is ENTJ, known by the book at Life’s Natural Leaders or here as The Executive. (this will come into play later in the post)
Anyway, Reese(2) and I were not in the best of moods. Mine was directly impacted by her being a total disaster and just a whip from the moment I picked her up from “school”. After many mood adjustments from mom, and dad, Reese just was not getting it. Pushing every button possible she had been introduced to the spoon, the get out of bed and get a whooping, and many other tactics just to try and get her to stay in bed… While all this is going on, Robin and I are reading in bed. I came to the part of the book that talks about my temperaments as a E(NT)J. Here are a few that stood out to Robin.
“Driven to try to understand the universe, asking Why or Why not”
“enthusiastic pursuers of adventure”
“we learn by challanging any authority or source”
“we have our own benchmark for what is competent and measure everyone against it”
“relentless in pursuit of excellence, and can be critical of our own shortcomings and others”
Getting about half way through the section Robin said… “Are these yours, or your daughters?”
Whack! Right between the eyes! All the things that totally drive me nuts about Reese, are at the core of who she is. She, is pretty much a mini-me, with a little dash of Robin. And the mini-me is driving me NUTS! But, at the end of the day, I recognize who God has made her to be…and it is our job as parents to guide and direct her to become all that God desires her to be.
God give me the patience and discernment to train up Reese (and Reia) in the way that they should go, so that they will not depart from it (Prov22:6). Or in my words, God please let Reese get out of this stage that she is in before I kill her!
new tools @ home
Added a few new digerati tools to the Storch household this weekend. Please note, they are tools, not toys!
1) Samsung LN-S4096D
2) Apple TV
3) Apple Airport Extreme
These additions also meant that we are added a new dinning room set, play set for the kids and a treadmill for the new house. Those will not make the digerati tools category, however, they will make the share the love with the family category!
ear bud madness…
The ear buds and creature speakers were heavily focused on these tunes this week!
-> Finger Eleven, Them Vs. You Vs. Me
-> Public Enemy, Fear of a Black Planet
-> The Police, Live
-> My Chemical Romance, The Black Parade
A strange music week for me! Are you listening to anything that should be in my iTunes?
why?
Why do you do what you do?
Ever thought about that question? No, really, really thought about it?
I pray for that question to totally penetrate your heart and your soul completely.
It is a question that should rock your world into ACTION!
Why do I do what I do? Read this post. It really sums it up for me.
bandwidth blowout
In the middle of total craziness something has hit me like a TON of bricks. Our bandwidth usage is flying through the roof! Sidebar…how do you know you have a totally cool boss? When they smile and say good job when you have to add servers or extra bandwidth!
This month we are on track to blow past 15TB of monthly bandwidth usage! Yes, 15TB of monthly transfer. Why do we get stoked about our bandwidth usage going up, and up? Because the more bandwidth we use on a monthly basis, the more LIFE changing content is getting in the hands of people who need it!
Typically I don’t talk much about vendors or tech companies, but I do need to give big props to a company that we love working with. Softlayer.com, they are one of our hosting companies that house a lot of our servers. Before last weekend we have had nearly 0 downtime. However, last weekend there Datacenter did go down for a few hours… Even with that outage, I can give them a raving enforcement.
For all you geeks out there, here are the details I know you are wanting. 9 Linux servers (5 streaming, 2 VOD/Podcasting, 2 web) and 4 Windows servers (2 streaming, 1 db, 1 web). 
Heres a look at one of the VOD servers today.
